COLUMN: If not the Garden Parkway, what will have an impact on our economy?

By Duane McCallister

Published: Friday, May 3, 2013 at 09:05 PM.

This community desperately needs a project that will have a dramatic impact, or a game changer, if you will. The Garden Parkway is/was such a project. If Sen. Harrington and Rep. Bumgardner are going to kill the one we’ve worked hard to get, it seems to me they have an obligation to tell us of their plan and then make it happen. It’s easy to tear things down – it’s much harder to build them.

McCallister is a former publisher of The Gazette. He lives in Cramerton.

Unemployment numbers released last week again place Gaston with the highest rate in the region. We are almost always are. Why is that?

In fact, employment in Gaston peaked in 1974, almost 40 years ago. Why is that?

Gaston’s property tax rate has been in the state’s highest 10 percent for at least the last 15 years and has even occupied the top spot on occasion. Why is that?

The median selling price for a house is consistently the lowest, by a wide margin, than any other county in Charlotte’s MSA and it’s usually about a third lower than the next lowest. Why is that?

Gaston income levels are the lowest in our MSA. Why is that?

Education is important for diversifying the economy and creating more job opportunities. Yet, Gaston’s educational attainment lags national, state and metro numbers. In 2007, 73 percent of our adults had graduated high school and that compared to 83 percent in the state and 85 percent nationally. For bachelor’s degrees, Gaston had 17 percent, while the state number was 26 percent with 28 percent for the nation. The difference in advanced degrees was even more pronounced with Gaston at 4.6 percent, compared to the state’s 8.6 percent and the nation’s 10.1 percent. Why is that?

Every year scores of Gaston parents send their kids out of town to college. Precious few of them are returning to work and raise their families in the communities where they grew up and where mom and dad still live. Why is that?

Gaston lies in the shadow of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Over the last 30 years, populations in the Charlotte MSA counties have grown 3-7 percent per year, except Gaston, which grew less than 1 percent per year. Why is that?

All of this is true, despite Gaston’s location immediately adjacent to Mecklenburg. And it’s essentially been true for the last 30+ years. But how can that be and what can be done about it?

Those were the questions facing business and community leaders in the year 2000. Their answer was to revive a plan that had been dormant for several years and at that time was called the 74/321 bypass. It provided the answer to all of the foregoing “why is that” questions. While we had the proximity to the Charlotte growth engine, we lacked the access and connectivity to benefit from it. Our only access was in the northern third of the county and was already beginning to choke on traffic volume.

But of even more importance, the additional Charlotte access would open the lower 40 percent of the county to development that otherwise would not happen. This is development that would provide new and more expensive housing that would lessen the high tax rate burden. The higher value housing, in turn, would not only attract more commercial development, it likely would mean higher salaries that would in turn attract more retail and entertainment opportunities. And provide the jobs that would keep our native sons and daughters from straying too far with our grandkids.

To the leaders a decade ago, the Garden Parkway was much more than just a road to Charlotte, it was the road to a more prosperous community.

But now we have sent politicians to Raleigh who apparently have a better idea as how to resecure Gaston from the economic backwaters. County leadership has fought hard to secure the funding to build the Garden Parkway. Now, they are not only letting it slip away, they are actively taking the lead in giving it away.

And I’m OK with that – if, and only if, they have a viable plan that will provide the same economic and social impact. Incremental change will not dig us out of our deep hole.

This community desperately needs a project that will have a dramatic impact, or a game changer, if you will. The Garden Parkway is/was such a project. If Sen. Harrington and Rep. Bumgardner are going to kill the one we’ve worked hard to get, it seems to me they have an obligation to tell us of their plan and then make it happen. It’s easy to tear things down – it’s much harder to build them.

McCallister is a former publisher of The Gazette. He lives in Cramerton.